


Orphan Boy

by The_Capricious_One



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1392133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Capricious_One/pseuds/The_Capricious_One
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slightly AU drabble, although it technically could fit in with the canon. Racebent Harry and Hermione. An exploration of Harry's character, as seen through a different and loaded set of world experiences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orphan Boy

Before Harry ever knew that he was the savior of the wizarding world, he was just a young boy, and not an important one at that. He watched on the edges of playgrounds, sometimes. A few times he saw a tyke scooped up by their parent and showered in kisses, as the child giggled and squirmed. It made him ache, in a dull sort of way, as he considered how much the parent must love them. He watched unblinking as they walked away, hand-in-hand.  
Of course, by the time he was eight the adults threw him disconcerted glances when he lingered too long by the playground. They eyed his rolled up baggy pants and the jumper that was four sizes too big and the shoes that were falling apart. He gave up watching. He’d already given up so many hopes. Each time felt easier. His relatives would never remember his birthday. His teachers would never intervene when Dudley hit him. His parents were well and truly dead, and they weren’t going to come for him. And he can’t watch the other children play.  
Aunt Petunia liked it better when he stayed home and “out of mischief”. She kept him busy with cooking and cleaning and tidying, muttering darkly about idle hands and the devil’s work. He wondered why she spoke of the devil so much, when she rarely went to church. He wondered why she looked at him like a stubborn spot of dirt. He thought that she would like him better if he did everything she asked of him, but she never seemed to. He even tried to tidy his cupboard, but she never looked there and eventually he gave up.  
He learned what a maid was when Dudley started calling him one. 

\----

“You look just like your father!” they always said. “Except your eyes. You have your mother’s eyes,” they said. Only, it wasn’t really true. Harry later knew, after countless hours of poring over his parents’ photographs, that he had his mother’s chin, and something of her nose and cheekbones as well. But he also knew that it wasn’t his face that they exclaimed over: when people met him, they often realized for the first time that he was a halfblood in more ways than one. He knew that when they looked at him, they saw caramel colored skin and hair that never lay flat (no matter how many times it was combed), even as they commented on how green his eyes were. _Just like your father,_ their mouths said. _Black,_ their eyes whispered. 

\---

“Malfoy can’t get away with calling you a-- you-know-what,” Ron said, pausing to retch up another slug. “Why aren’t you upset about this?”  
“Just leave it,” Hermione said tiredly. Even her frizzy hair seemed deflated. “Malfoy’s opinion means nothing to me.”  
Harry could hear from her tone that this wasn’t the first time she had said these words. The name had changed,and the sentiment came from a remembered hurt, not Malfoy’s actions on the Quidditch pitch.  
“He can’t get away with this!” Ron repeated angrily.  
Harry looked from Ron--pale, redheaded, freckled Ron, who had five protective older brothers and a legacy to live up to-- to Hermione-- kinky haired, with skin far darker than his own, no siblings and two working parents and so much prejudice to live down -- and he thought better of explaining. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. She met his gaze and smiled wanly. Their eyes communicated what words could not.  
Years later he asked her what her bullies had called her.  
“It doesn’t matter what they said,” she replied. “It was a lifetime ago. A world away.”

\---  
Having Aunt Marge come ‘round never ended well for Harry. This time was no different, for all that he had enough magic to make sure she never treats him badly again. Or, he thinks he does, if only he had the right spell. Instead he bowed his head and let her thrust the heavy suitcase into his stomach, and he carried it to the guest room without complaint. He kept quiet when she loudly proclaims his worthlessness, how she sure that St. Brutus’s must be the perfect place for him because it’s where “people like him” belong. Harry thought of Hogsmeade and he thought of broomsticks and he kept his face impassive. He is good at this, he thought. He has had a lot of practice. But then Marge begins to insult his parents. Lazy, unemployed, drunkard, she said of his father. There was something wrong with her, she said of his mother, her finger tracing loose circles near her temple. His composure flies out the window. Within minutes, so does Marge.

\---

For the first time in years, he’s grateful for the way he looks. When he turns away from Cho, his face burning with shame, he realizes that at least she’ll never know how hard he’s blushing.

\---

Once more people whispered about Harry, and he moved through the school like a dolphin through a school of fish. They parted around him, avoiding contact as if he were carrying some disease. They watched him and whispered behind his back, but always loud enough that he can hear them. Attention seeker, they call him. Liar. The people love what the Prophet has to say, they lap it up, they readily believe that their halfblood saviour is nothing more than a scoundrel. They can’t believe that once, they believed him to be the Chosen One. They should have seen his unworthiness from the moment they first saw him.  
Harry can’t help but think resentfully that they already did.

\---

Dumbledore once told Harry of how he had more in common with Tom Riddle than one would think. Looking down now at Voldemort motionless body, Harry finds it hard to see. Voldemort is hairless, where Harry’s wild uncut hair tumbles to his shoulders. Red eyes, the opposite of Harry’s green. Cold and pale even in life, where Harry is fiery and sun-darkened. Heartless, where Harry is already bursting with pain for all those fallen. There have been so many who have died for this man, whether for him or against his cause. Tom Riddle’s brief defiance of mortality came at a great cost, and he paid so little of it.  
But Harry knows better than to see only the surface of things. Dumbledore thought of blood status, of orphanhood, of potential for darkness, when he spoke of their similarities. But Harry knows that deep inside Tom may have been a little orphan boy, lost and confused, but that Tom and Harry were never alike. Tom saw pain as evidence that power was the only path to happiness. Harry accepted it as a sign that better things were coming. The Sorting Hat offered Slytherin to the both of them, and only Harry had refused. Though his refusal had more to do with prejudice than morality, the years had proven to him that he had made the right decision. He had never desired greatness. He had never sought to be without pain. He had little use for respect. He only wanted to be loved. He had only wanted a family.  
When the angry mob came for Voldemort’s body, to dismember and defile it, Harry refused them. Tom Riddle was buried in a pine casket next to his mother’s grave. There was no ceremony and no priest, and only five people were allowed to attend. They marked his grave with a wooden post marked “Tom Riddle”. It was enough, Harry thought, that they denied him his immortality. The wooden post, bearing the name Voldemort had spent his life desperately trying to escape, would be his only physical memorial, and it would not last long. His victims deserved their marble plaques and their place in the history books. Voldemort would not be remembered. His victims and vanquishers would.

\---

When Harry next sees Draco, it is in the Wizengamot courtroom, where the first non-Death Eater trials are starting. Draco is stiff and uncertain. Though he ultimately chose the correct side, he is still a Malfoy and a pureblood. He senses that the world order is changing, and he is scared and confused. Hermione catches sight of Draco too, and she flashes him a smile that is all sharp edges. She is dressed for her part, and Harry can’t help but be proud of her. He knows how many weeks have gone into this, how many hours she has planned her strategy. He’s never seen a proper Wizard lawyer before, but he thinks that Hermione is the perfect first.  
The trial begins. Fifty white faces turn to watch one black woman, their expressions complacent with assured power and unwavering constancy. Hermione smiles prettily, opens up her briefcase, clears her throat, and demolishes the legal system in ten minutes flat. Harry has to hide his face and bite his wrist, because the dumbstruck faces of the Wizengamot and the audience are so beautifully horrified that he has to wipe away tears of suppressed laughter. Hermione then spends the next fifty minutes explaining how to fix it. There are times when Wizengamot tries to interrupt her, and even times when the audience tries to shout her down, but Hermione has grown into her maturity and she is an implacable force. At no point does she shout, at no point does she falter. Harry is struck by an overwhelming gratitude that he knows this beautiful hurricane. She stands tall and proud, an unstoppable force of change, an inconvenient truth that does not allow itself to be dismissed.  
The Wizarding world would never be the same.


End file.
